Languages:
Kirundi 29.7% (official), Kirundi and other language 9.1%, French (official) and French and other language 0.3%, Swahili and Swahili and other language 0.2% (along Lake Tanganyika and in the Bujumbura area), English and English and other language 0.06%, more than 2 languages 3.7%, unspecified 56.9% (2008 est.)

Communications: Telephones: main lines
in use: 17,400 (2012); mobile cellular: 2.247 million (2012). Broadcast media: state-controlled La Radiodiffusion et Television Nationale de Burundi (RTNB) operates the lone TV station and the only national radio network; about 10 privately owned radio stations; transmissions of several international broadcasters are available in Bujumbura (2007). Internet
hosts: 229 (2011). Internet users: 157,800 (2009).

International disputes: Burundi and Rwanda dispute two sq km (0.8 sq mi) of Sabanerwa, a farmed area in the Rukurazi Valley where the Akanyaru/Kanyaru River shifted its course southward after heavy rains in 1965; cross-border conflicts persist among Tutsi, Hutu, other ethnic groups, associated political rebels, armed gangs, and various government forces in the Great Lakes region.

Geography

Wedged between Tanzania, the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, and Rwanda in east-central Africa, Burundi occupies a high
plateau divided by several deep valleys. It is equal in size to
Maryland.

Government

Republic.

History

The original inhabitants of Burundi were the
Twa, a Pygmy people who now make up only 1% of the population. Today the
population is divided between the Hutu (approximately 85%) and the Tutsi,
approximately 14%. While the Hutu and Tutsi are considered to be two
separate ethnic groups, scholars point out that they speak the same
language, have a history of intermarriage, and share many cultural
characteristics. Traditionally, the differences between the two groups
were occupational rather than ethnic. Agricultural people were considered
Hutu, while the cattle-owning elite were identified as Tutsi. In theory,
Tutsi were tall and thin, while Hutu were short and square, but in fact it
is often impossible to tell one from the other. The 1933 requirement by
the Belgians that everyone carry an identity card indicating tribal
ethnicity as Tutsi or Hutu increased the distinction. Since independence,
the landowning Tutsi aristocracy has dominated Burundi.

Burundi was once part of German East Africa.
Belgium won a League of Nations mandate in 1923, and subsequently Burundi,
with Rwanda, was transferred to the status of a United Nations trust
territory. In 1962, Burundi gained independence and became a kingdom under
Mwami Mwambutsa IV, a Tutsi. A Hutu rebellion took place in 1965, leading
to brutal Tutsi retaliations. Mwambutsa was deposed by his son,
Ntaré V, in 1966. Ntaré in turn was overthrown the same year
in a military coup by Premier Michel Micombero, also a Tutsi. In
1970–1971, a civil war erupted, leaving more than 100,000 Hutu
dead.

On Nov. 1, 1976, Lt. Col. Jean-Baptiste Bagaza
led a coup and assumed the presidency. He suspended the constitution and
announced that a 30-member Supreme Revolutionary Council would be the
governing body. In Sept. 1987, Bagaza was overthrown by Maj. Pierre
Buyoya, who became president. Ethnic hatred again flared in Aug. 1988, and
about 20,000 Hutu were slaughtered. Buyoya, however, began reforms to heal
the country's ethnic rift. The Burundi Democracy Front's candidate,
Melchior Ndadaye, won the country's first democratic presidential
elections, held on June 2, 1993. Ndadaye, the first Hutu to assume power
in Burundi, was killed within months during a coup. The second Hutu
president, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was killed on April 6, 1994, when a plane
carrying him and the Rwandan president was shot down. As a result, Hutu
youth gangs began massacring Tutsi; the Tutsi-controlled army retaliated
by killing Hutus.

Burundi's Brutal Civil War Nears Its End

The frequency of ethnic clashes increased,
developing into a low-intensity civil war. A six-nation regional proposal
to send troops into Burundi to maintain peace and order was devised in
July 1996. Distrustful of the scheme, the Tutsi-dominated army led a coup
deposing the Hutu president and installed Maj. Pierre Buyoya that month.
More than 300,000 people have been killed in the civil war since 1993,
with the Tutsi-dominated army and the Hutu rebel forces responsible for
the slaughter. After several aborted cease-fires, a 2001 peace plan
included a power-sharing agreement that has been relatively successful:
Buyoya, a Tutsi, governed the new transitional government for the first 18
months; then, in April 2003, a Hutu president, Domitien Ndayizeye, assumed
power. In Aug. 2005, former Hutu rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza was
elected president by Parliament. The peaceful transfer of power to a
democratically elected leader seemed to indicate that Burundi's 12-year
civil war was truly at an end. Peace talks between the government and
Burundi's only remaining rebel group continued in 2006.

The government and the rebel group Forces for National Liberation,
which was the last rebel group to engage in negotiations, signed a
cease-fire in May 2008, signaling finality in the 15-year civil war that
claimed some 300,000 lives.